May 4, 2012

"... aware that their lack of any special standing could mean that a job they’re qualified for could end up going to someone else," says Boston Herald columnist Michael Graham. That is, it's not so much that she may have dishonestly gotten herself considered for affirmative action; it's affirmative action.

By the way, when we're making fun of someone who's claimed minority status that she doesn't have, is it okay to use old-fashioned racial humor, e.g., calling Warren "pale-faced" and "Princess IsItFall–Yet"? I wouldn't do that. Am I a prissy enforcer of political correctness?

Personally, I like bad, obvious humor. However, this thing with Warren is so ridiculous that I can't even think up anything funny to say about it. It's about as ridiculous as Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker from back in the 1980s. How do you spoof that?

Actually, I think using old-fashioned "racial" humor to ridicule the racial poseur is not only "okay", it's laudable, virtually mandatory, and, funny.

Here's to Princess Yellow Hair Egg-on-the-Face!

While I oppose affirmative action on principle (at least at it was implemented), I think there is a special circle in the Inferno for people who claim ethnic preference on spurious grounds. It demonstrates a cynicism and contempt for the decent people who do support affirmative action that makes the blood to boil (as Hiram Johnson once said).

No matter the situation or the pool of qualified candidates, it seems "the fix" is always "in" from the get-go when it comes to Liz Warren.

Indeed, once she reached the "pinnacle" using her claimed status, why give a (true) minority any opportunity, much less a preferred chance? By then, the insider's "old boy" network was good enough for Liz.

Bumped from last night's thread, one of the local Mass Democrats pushed out of the 2012 Senate race, Setti Warren [no relation].

In May 2011, [Setti Warren] announced a bid to oppose U.S. Senator Scott Brown in the 2012 Senate election, but dropped out of the race four months later. On September 29th, 2011 Warren dropped out of the race, declaring "I no longer believe I have a clear path to victory in this race"

Knowing that she lied on her own resume is a pretty good quality to have for being the head of the consumer financial truth commission (or what ever it is to be called). Obama dodged a bullet on that one.

It is a bogus reason to give a job you need and are best qualiird for to another person who has politically correct DNA.

When jobs were plentiful it was only about who got the plums and everybody else got lesser honor and pay. But suddenly it has become about who gets thrown on the junk pile of life for no good reason. That goes double on "government jobs" which are nearly all of the job openings today.

As sweet and sympathetic a figure as Warren cuts, she is not going to win awards for favoring a corrupt system that is destroying good people.

She will get called names all day long until she quits shilling for that AA system which she has ridden to the top. The polite society inside Academia will not like it when the Rubes go after their circus, but when she loses, Harvard professors will have a new reality to deal with. And it is about time.

In the US West, Indians preferred to be called Indians. It's the eastern nabobs of negativity that invented Native American. Since that's phoney why not use pre-PC jokes at the expense of a Phoney Indian.

Does it make you chuckle to learn that folks in MA are referring to her now as "Fauxcahontas" and "Taxagewea", or that they are saying she is a "member of the Wanabee sept of the Cherokee?" If you answer "no", then my answer is "yes."

It's not even so much that she's a cheater. She is simply one of the "Elite". She feels that her superior intellect and background gives her the right to simply take a Senate seat. Her method of 'using' a minority status for her own gain, was clearly not an issue of morality for her back then. Hell- it's the system people like her (can I say it.....Liberals) created. Removing people as individuals and instead, grouping them into selective collectives has its purposes. One of them is to give some an advantage over others. She clearly could read the tea leaves, and listed herself into one of the approved groups.

She is not entitled to anything, nor is she as smart as she thinks. She is, however, degreed and credentialed which, along with a minority status, can certainly get you moving up the ladder in academia or government work. Let's just say that this has always worked for her, until recently. Now her words and thoughts are held out to the larger world for inspection. So far, they are found to be loathsome.

I suspect that the more she talks, the more curious this will become. Remember her vaunted rant on how no one can make it on their own? I guess what she meant by that we that make it by clinging onto an approved group.

Dan in Philly, the "parts unknown" would qualify you for professional wrestling, at least back in the day. ECW would have loved billing someone as "Dan in Philly, from parts unknown!" You could have had an ongoing feud with Spike Dudley!

When I first read the Graham quote I felt like he was trying to gin up a high minded reason for justifying the schaudenfreude. Yah, yah, many of us hate affirmative action and all. But right now we're still relishing in watching another liberal phony caught in a lie twist in the wind.

"The whole episode is ugly. It makes her a cheater - which is what she is. She is the epitomy of what the "Occupiers" are complaining about - a rich person who got there by cheating. "

Yes, except two things: she actually could have Indian blood in her - has anyone heard any confirmation that she doesn't?

Second, there are two ways to cheat: the most obvious one is to break the rules. The less obvious but more pernicious one is to create laws that cheat against what most know to be right.

Affirmative action, created by rules and laws, falls into this category. It cheats against the honest notion of merit to fulfill a politically determined outcome - some notion of racial redress - that logically cannot happen, and itself depends upon racial discrimination to achieve its desired effect.

Liberals like Warren have been happy to cheat both ways: first for herself, and and then to provide political advantage for favored groups against merit.

She'll still get at least 45% of the vote in November, only proving that cheating doesn't matter so much anymore.

affirmative action adds racial (and ethnic, and gender, and religious) disadvantage to the collection of things that colleges examine when determining an applicant. There are no quotas and it doesn’t guarantee entry; a bad candidate is a bad candidate, regardless of their race. But if a Latino student and a white student are equally matched, the university might lean towards always choosing the former.

This is not how affirmative action works, not even remotely, and it's remarkable that a political pundit could be so ignorant of the reality.

That story goes on to mention that -

Overall, 46 percent of Millennials agree that the government pays too much attention to the problems of minorities, with 49 percent who disagree. 48 percent also agree that discrimination against whites is a genuine problem. When you disaggregate by race and count only white Millennials, the picture is much worse.

A solid majority of white Millennials, 56 percent, say that government has paid too much attention to the problems of blacks and other minorities. An even larger majority, 58 percent, say that “discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.”

"Being 1/32 Cherokee (if that is even true), is not the point of affirmative action (whether affirmative action is a good thing or not)."

Exactly. If she's not even sure that she's 1/32 Cherokee (after all, geneaologists are "scrambling" to prove it) then what's the chance it's had any material affect on her or her opportunities whatsoever. Easy answer - the chances are zero. She's had no material, social or intellectual disadvantage from an immeasurable trace of DNA so why should it have anything to do with awarding her advantage in future prospects.

According to wikipedia: "The professor who recruited Warren to Harvard, Charles Fried, told the Associated Press that Warren was hired solely for her qualifications, and not for any reasons related to ancestry".

Which illustrates one of the curios things about affirmative action - we're told that we really really NEED it, but we're also told that no person in the country has benefited from it. We're told that in the aggregate "minorities" need to be given an edge over white males, but we're also told that it's outrageous and insulting to suggest that any individual "minority" did not succeed solely on her/his qualification.

Of course the dirty secret about affirmative action is that Warren did benefit from it, simply by being a woman.

I think that extending AA to blacks or Native Americans is a dubious proposition both in terms of the US constitution and of simple fairness. But AA for women is pure distilled insanity.

In 2007 there was a scandal at MIT. Director of Admissions is a pretty important and pressure-filled position there, but Marilee Jones did the job with star quality. The best of the best try to get in there, and a lot of them have got high-powered parents. Given that 9 out of 10 applicants are told "Sorry", there's a lot of disappointed people to deal with.

But Marilee had started out at MIT as a secretary and worked her way up over 28 years of loyal service to the Institute. She was drenched in the culture there and had proven herself time and again. She was a sought-out speaker in her field and was greatly admired.

But not by her husband. She got involved in a divorce. In the middle of that MIT got a phone call alleging that Marilee had falsified her academic credentials when she had originally applied for the job of secretary - a job that did not require a college degree. Within 24 hours of the point that this was verified, a woman who was part of MIT's top hierarchy was asked to resign. Immediately.

It's called integrity. I guess it's too much to ask of the Democratic party.

Oh, come on, Ann -- this is the delicious opportunity to look down on someone who seems to have made a life looking down on others: she is rich, speaks with forked tongue (we need more taxes, not like me and my rich husband pay more than we have to even though the state lets us do so), she used family lore to take a highly prized job that could otherwise really have gone to an equally qualified/better qualified candidate, and now she is running around trying to justify it. I know I read it here first, but I can't remember the poster -- Princess Sits With Tenure.

X said..."Here's the thing althouse: If you choose to hit from the ladies tees of life, don't be mad that people notice."

Awesome, poetic, succinct and accurate.

It would be interesting for Althouse to disclose just how much she has personally benefited from affirmative action in her career. If she has benefited from affirmative action, isn't her defense of it suspect because of the conflict of interest?

Sure, if you are a member of a dem Privileged Interest Group (PIG) such as women, blacks, hispanics, affirmative action benefits you but it discriminates against white males. Doesn't defending affirmative action make Althouse just another corrupt, hypocritical PIGgy?

"aware that their lack of any special standing could mean that a job they’re qualified for could end up going to someone else"

That's putting it passively. I think what's really happening and what's abhorrent is that some qualified people are virtually excluded from the opportunity because of their race or lack of other special privilege. They are discriminated against. Today it is going against people who have had no relationship with the ills of the past. They were born innocent, but born wrong in the eyes of those who support AA.

Knowing that she lied on her own resume is a pretty good quality to have for being the head of the consumer financial truth commission (or what ever it is to be called). Obama dodged a bullet on that one.

If you look at me I'm a typical blue-eyed white male. I look about as ethnic as Wonder Bread. But parish records in Bermuda show the word "colored" next to the names of one of my great-great grandmothers and one of my great-great-great-grandmothers. On that basis I could claim African ancestry with pretty much the same justification Prof. Warren uses to claim Indian ancestry. Maybe more - I've got documentation. But it would be ridiculous and frankly dishonest to do so when, say, applying for a job.

What is most unfair of all is discrimination against dumb people. Nobody recruits them, except by accident like with Warren.

When you really think about it, everything you are is pure luck. Simply change the parents and location of your birth and you become a career dung collector, member of the Khmer Rouge, fighter with the Taliban or an Inuit sitting next to an ice hole.

How feaking lucky are we? Yahooooo, it's Friday in America! And, that's a damned good thing. I'm a lucky S.O.B.

Kevin Noble Maillard brings a bit of perspective to the issue in an op-ed article: The Republican approach to race is to feign that it is irrelevant — until it becomes politically advantageous to bring it up. Birthers question Obama’s state of origin (and implicitly his multiracial heritage) in efforts to disqualify him from the presidency. They characterize him as “other.” For Warren, Massachusetts Republicans place doubts on her racial claims to portray her as an opportunistic academic seeking special treatment. In both birther camps, opponents look to ancestral origins as the smoking gun, and ride the ambiguity for the duration.

That pap is so damned weak and worn out. You ascribe motives of racism to people you never met, and ignore a simple concern with cheating. Simple cheating. People ask: Did you sneak in line. Because people say they saw you sneak in line, and you yell racist. Seriously, is there another argument you guys have on anything?

You have to go all the way to the absurdity that a blond, white woman is being racially discriminated against by white racists because she is too white. Aren't you a smart guy? Can't you do better, even different would be nice? Just pick another argument at random to break it up a little. Racism can't possibly be behind everything you don't agree with.

Yes, Althouse has expressed her strong support for affirmative action several times. I am not limiting my knowledge of the Althouse belief system to this single post.

Just so - and I am not expanding my comment beyond the bounds of THIS discussion, purposefully. Althouse does not defend affirmative action here. That is MY point. Why do you drag her beliefs about AA into THIS discussion, when the subject is Warren's consistency, or lack thereof?

"But this is spin... it's what is the meaning of "is." Being 1/32 Cherokee (if that is even true), is not the point of affirmative action (whether affirmative action is a good thing or not)."

Yes, of course it's spin - but do the actual rules of affirmative action allow someone like Warren to assert minority status on the basis of a 1/32 ancestry of two Indian tribes?

I don't know. I haven't ever applied to anything invoking affirmative action, so I can't say she couldn't. After all, Harvard apparently didn't blanch at the assertion on her application - so at some level, the visually imperceptible assertion of minority status must be allowed - at least at Harvard. Is the threshold 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, or even 1/64?

I have no idea. Obviously the fraction approaches utter absurdity at some point - but for the "one-drop" crowd on the Left, I don't suppose it does.

One big problem with affirmative action is its other side... the discrimination charges.

Once a "favored minority" is hired, it can be hard to fire that favored minority or the company risks charges of discrimination.

Sure I'm late to work every day, do my nails when I'm supposed to be taking calls, go over my allotted lunch periods often, insist on taking my breaks exactly on time no matter what, and put a lot of my work on to others so it actually gets done, but you're firing me because I'm [favored minority]. So I'll sue the company for many hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars.

Of course, then the company ends up keeping me, because it's far cheaper to pay me for doing nothing than to pay off a lawsuit.

Steve said...Yes, Althouse has expressed her strong support for affirmative action several times. I am not limiting my knowledge of the Althouse belief system to this single post.

Rocketeer said:"Just so - and I am not expanding my comment beyond the bounds of THIS discussion, purposefully. Althouse does not defend affirmative action here. That is MY point. Why do you drag her beliefs about AA into THIS discussion, when the subject is Warren's consistency, or lack thereof?"

Because the bigger issue is whether affirmative action is a corrupt system which discriminates against white males and was devised by the dems to buy votes for their PIGs.

Some people like Althouse get lost in tiny disagreements like the discussion about Warren cheating. The larger issue of the innate corruption of affirmative action is much more important than a single example of cheating.

Althouse is a defender of a corrupt system from she has surely benefited. Attacking one instance of cheating in an innately corrupt system that she defends does not put her on the moral high ground.

If you want to disagree with something I state, make an argument but implying that I don't have the right to widen the discussion is absurd.

aware that their lack of any special standing could mean that a job they’re qualified for could end up going to someone else,"

DOH!! The Boston Herald wakes up to what the rest of us (Pale Faced Gringos) have known for years. The reverse discrimination of AA is just as bad as the original discrimination it was trying to correct. Or worse..... since it forces people to hire the LESS qualified based purely on race.

Discrimination on race or preference on race, which is just another way to define discrimination, is bad.

Unintended consequences. Unexpectedly!!! Yet again as a result of liberalism ideology. Do we detect a pattern? Hmmmm?

If you want to disagree with something I state, make an argument but implying that I don't have the right to widen the discussion is absurd.

Just so we're clear, I didn't mean to imply that you don't have the right to TRY to widen the discussion. I was trying to imply, gently, that you are a bore. So let me state that PLAINLY, and add that it's tiresome when people try and make every post about how ALTHOUSEISAHYPOCRITE!!1!!!!

I think one of the next phases in this story is to dig around and see if Elisabeth Warren tried to game the system further by setting her now in their late 30s children (Amelia, Alexander) up in going through school, college, and their early careers as affirmative action poster children.

Did gaming the system extend to presenting, thus priviliging her children as "bona fide minorities" deserving of special favors?

"Just so we're clear, I didn't mean to imply that you don't have the right to TRY to widen the discussion. I was trying to imply, gently, that you are a bore. So let me state that PLAINLY, and add that it's tiresome when people try and make every post about how ALTHOUSEISAHYPOCRITE!!1!!!!"

Love your use of caps, how childish. You can't make a reasoned argument so you name call, how childish (and cowardly to do so anonymously). Finally, few of my posts are about Althouse being a hypocrite so you are factually wrong.

If Althouse benefited from affirmative action, she should disclose her conflict of interest when she talks about affirmative action. Criticizing a single abuse of affirmative action does not reclaim the moral high ground for her re: affirmative action because she is wrong for defending an inherently immoral and corrupt system that is unconstitutional.

BTW, when you call me a bore, you are probably projecting. You may learn about that when you take Psych 101.

Live by the stereotype, die by the stereotype.\Is it racist to use racial terms to mock the hypocritical abuse of a racial quota system? Ok, fine, a racial bonus allotment system? Is it racist to refer to a lying racist in "racial" terms?

Was the "old fashioned racial humor" racist? Serious question. Did people take it (these racial phrases) seriously back in the day? I mean, did anyone ever really think that Indians went around all the time saying "How" or "heap big wampum" or whatever? No one thinks that now. The only place I've ever seen this is in old cartoons and the "How" saying Indians seemed to come out ahead of the "palefaces" at least in that context. Also, it seemed fairly even-handed. I don't think "paleface" is a big compliment.

What is more racist: the "old fashioned racial humor" or the new fashioned racial presumptions?

What is more racist: old cartoons where stereotypical Indicans give Elmer Fudd or Wile E. Coyote trouble or current Hollywood productions (fictional and documentary) where the assumptions are that Indians (or fill in the disadvantaged group of your choosing) are miserable and just cannot help themselves? Rescue me, white man!

You can't make a reasoned argument so you name call, how childish (and cowardly to do so anonymously). Finally, few of my posts are about Althouse being a hypocrite so you are factually wrong.

A) I'm not calling you a name; I'm insulting you. Related, granted, but different. Your diversion is boring. You are a bore, at least in this thread. You can't make an interesting contribution based on the subject directly at hand (Graham's opinon piece, Warren's inconsistecy, and tangentially, the acceptability of racially-tinged humor) so you try to shift the subject to something that interests YOU.B) Few of your comments may be about Althouse's hypocrisy - but who cares? This one was. Tiresome.C) Yes, pseudonymous commenting on a weblog is cowardly. Guilty as charged! I'm super duper weasely that way. Craven, chicken-hearted, lily-livered. Commenting on a weblog under your real name, on the other hand, is a consequential and noteworthy act -evidence of a bravery rarely seen in our world today. Congrats on your remarkable valor, Steve Koch! If that's what your real name is.

Here is a joke I used to tell my middle school students. I cleaned it up for them. Many of you probably know the dirty version.

In a village far away, all the children were named by the village shaman. One day a young man came to the shaman and asked him how he chose the names he gave. The shaman explained that when a child was about to be born, he built a sacred fire in the ancient method and burned the sacred powder and breathed the sacred smoke. He meditated until dawn and then looked out the door. If he saw snow softly falling, the child's name would be 'Snow Softly Falling'. If the saw a black crow fly over, the child would be called 'Black Crow fly Over'. Then the shaman asked, “Why do you ask this question, Puking Dog?”

-First in her class at NYU-Clerked for Judge Sand, SDNY-Sullivan & Cromwell.

Doesn't sound like she needs to pad those stats to work anywhere.

If we're looking to see if she benefitted from being a woman, then she might have received preferences for both her clerkship and the law firm. Not being number 1 though, if it was blind as it was at my school [at about the same time].

-First in her class at NYU-Clerked for Judge Sand, SDNY-Sullivan & Cromwell.

Doesn't sound like she needs to pad those stats to work anywhere."

Sweet resume. Affirmative action obviously did not help her graduate first at NYU law school but almost certainly helped her in academia (where she went very early in her legal career). Back in the 80's universities were desperate to hire and tenure female professors.

R/V:For Warren, Massachusetts Republicans place doubts on her racial claims to portray her as an opportunistic academic seeking special treatment.

Is there an argument that she is not an opportunistic academic seeking special treatment? Also, it's Warren discussing her roots, or alleged roots, using them to her advantage, and the Republicans are criticizing her for that, not for being "other."

You two are the best argument why Affirmative Action should be banned. It causes people to doubt what they shouldn't. Number ones at top 5 law schools get the best clerkships and become associates at white shoe firms.

Actually I made no comment on her clerkship or law firm and limited my comment to affirmative action helping her in academia since academia was desperate to hire women professors back in the 80's. But I agree that affirmative action undermines the credibility of those benefiting from affirmative action.

I'd also like to note that many who do very well in law school turn out to be not so good at litigating and return to academia as soon as possible.

"By the way, when we're making fun of someone who's claimed minority status that she doesn't have, is it okay to use old-fashioned racial humor, e.g., calling Warren "pale-faced" and "Princess IsItFall–Yet"? I wouldn't do that. Am I a prissy enforcer of political correctness?"

Not only are white guys not given the job, they're not even allowed to laugh about it.

I confess, back in the early 70s, when I was in my teens I did check the American Indian (I think it was called then) box a couple of times. Neither instances where it really mattered and not to gain advantage but to show my contempt for the question in the first place. Family tradition says that my 2x great grandmother was Cherokee, so it wasn't a lie, even if we don't have documentation.

Christy - the Trail of Tears means that Americans who aren't even descended from those white Americans who caused it must pay reparations. So I as a Soviet emigre am guilty of the Trail of Tears because of the hue of my skin.

Yeah, I'm surprised this hasn't prompted a larger discussion about affirmative action in the national news. I would say the issue is pretty ripe for political backlash considering the state of the economy. Policies like AA can pass muster with Dem-voting working class whites when the economy is humming, but now? Everyone's feeling the crunch, and the notion that there is a race-based spoils system (and one that is continually gamed by people it was not intended to benefit) should outrage everyone.

When I was in undergrad, most of the black and Hispanic kids did not come from underprivileged backgrounds, but from upper-middle and upper class families and well-known private schools. It kind of made me sick to think that AA put me at a disadvantage against those kids, because poor Asians from flyover country don't get special status.

The biggest reason why Warren will win is because MA is a liberal state

Yeah, but typically, it doesn't elect liberal Dems that fit Warren's profile -- the airy intellectual from academia. She's more like the kind of Republicans MA sometimes elects. She's more like William Weld than Ted Kennedy.

Very prissy. But then you are on the public payroll and have to be PC. Oh, you can pretend to be free to speak as you please. But you cannot. No big deal, we all have to compromise our principles in some ways to survive, to bite our tongues and play nice with the client/boss/provost. But breezily bringing in prissy does not change the hard bisquits of a new faux free speech that is not free at all, not free in the least.

Very prissy. But then you are on the public payroll and have to be PC. Oh, you can pretend to be free to speak as you please. But you cannot. No big deal, we all have to compromise our principles in some ways to survive, to bite our tongues and play nice with the client/boss/provost. But breezily bringing in prissy does not change the hard bisquits of a new faux free speech that is not free at all, not free in the least.

"The Trail of Tears means that Americans who aren't even descended from those white Americans who caused it must pay reparations. So I as a Soviet emigre am guilty of the Trail of Tears because of the hue of my skin."

God I hate this argument. the Trail of Tears for Fears. Special exemptions for white people who had ancestors emigrate after 1776, 1865, 1965, whatever. Special exemptions for white people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War, once said something nice to an Indian, fought for civil rights in the 1960s. Pleading for favor for special groups. Sound familiar? Groups with identities that can be faked. How about now?

This approach neatly avoids the key question whether AA is effective social policy and still helps the people it was intended to help or whether it is inherently problematic for those very people as well as the rest of the country.

If you're an American, no matter when you came to be one, you inherit the good with the bad, the advantages created by past Americans as well as the problems. I'd say the advantages far outweigh the problems. Still.

If you're an American, no matter when you came to be one, you inherit the good with the bad, the advantages created by past Americans as well as the problems. I'd say the advantages far outweigh the problems. Still.

Yeah, but we still exist as individuals, not as numbers or statistics in someone else's "historical narrative."I'm of Asian descent and immigrated here in 1977. WTF did I ever do to get the short stick? I don't want to get screwed because of "racial overrepresentation" or get treated any differently. I'm not my parents, my grandparents, or the descendant of Southern slave-owners.

Lost in all the "racial-justice" speak is that once you start picking special winners based on race, you're also relegating others to loserdom based on race. For some reason all these lovely non-racists on the Left gleefully cackle when they imagine that it's just white people getting hosed (because, ya know, historical race-crime has no expiration date or logical nexus, ergo recent Russian immigrants are guilty too), but none of them can ever come up with a decent explanation why a poor Asian kid's grades should be worth less than those of a rich black one.

I dunno. Yes, it IS affirmative action in the sense that when institutions like Harvard count noses to portray themselves as "diverse," they count every nose they can find so that their total of "minority" or even "minority and women" employees looks good. Whether or not you agree with affirmative action, this kind of nose counting subverts the supposed intent of affirmative action requirements and programs which was to give preferential treatment to Black people after a century of undisputed job discrimination. I know of a young white Jewish woman who classified herself as "Hispanic" on college applications, based on the birth of one of her Jewish grandmothers in Mexico.

As a consequence if this gaming in which colleges and others are complicit, we have all the negative results of affirmative action but without any of the desired benefits.

God I hate this argument. the Trail of Tears for Fears. Special exemptions for white people who had ancestors emigrate after 1776, 1865, 1965, whatever. Special exemptions for white people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War, once said something nice to an Indian, fought for civil rights in the 1960s. Pleading for favor for special groups. Sound familiar? Groups with identities that can be faked. How about now?

All of this nonsense is intended divide the majority who could come together and put paid to affirmative action special pleading.

I see posters here saying "I'm relatively new in the US, so it's not me" -- bah! I'm the opposite - forebears here since the 1630s, some slaveholders (some of whom freed their slaves before The War, some who didn't), veterans of all of America's wars since Bacon's Rebellion. As far as I'm concerned, we've paid the price of America in some 380 years of sweat, blood, success and ruin, public service and civic engagement through the centuries.

Everyone's welcome here as long as they internalize the basic American values of independence, liberty, honesty and hard work. Anyone who expects or demands something for nothing - whether based on what happened 150 years ago or even 50 years ago - can go to the devil.

"Some people like Althouse get lost in tiny disagreements like the discussion about Warren cheating. The larger issue of the innate corruption of affirmative action is much more important than a single example of cheating."

Whereas Althouse does not always get lost in tiny disagreements, on the larger issue of AA corruption, Althouse appears to take a legalistic, not a moral outlook, disappointing I am sure not a few, myself included.

Still, it's her life, and her great virtue is willingness to ride its buffetings, to play the game, to face the devil, and with luck, to realize it's a dream. She and Meade are civilian warriors using the light they are given to foster freedom.

I am 1/8th Cherokee (maybe a little more, since my Cherokee great-grandmother married a Melungeon) and I have never claimed it for any gain because I wasn't raised in the Tribe and have never experienced discrimination because of it. (If I had any disadvantages in my life, it's because I was raised in Southern Appalachia and lots of folks think that means dumb. It doesn't. It means I learned a different set of skills than you did growing up and I happen to think that some of them are more useful.) I wouldn't call Elizabeth Warren Lieawatha or Fauxcahontas or any of that, it would be rude and I don't make fun of my heritage because I value it, even though I wasn't raised in the tribe. (I have no problem with the KC Chiefs or the Washington Redskins, but making fun of actual given tribal names crosses the line.) I would be more likely to say, "Elizabeth Warren speaks with forked tongue." I would also call her pale-faced, because it's obviously true.

I've read that you have to be one quarter minority for it to count for affirmative action. If that's the rule then it seems to me that the professor from Pocahontas broke the law when she claimed to be a minority because she knew her Indian relative wasn't a grandparent. But wouldn't Harvard have have checked?

Surely "Aboriginal Americans" would make more sense? (At least until we drift into the world of fractional blood quanta.)

I vote for "Indigenous Americans". And you could shorten that to the first 4 letters of the first word and the last 3 of the second.

I use "Siberian Americans", because that's where the folks who were here in 15th century came from. They wiped out earlier inhabitants who came from Southeast Asia, Polynesia, and maybe Africa & Europe too. They had superior military technology in the form of the Clovis spearpoint.

You are a prissy enforcer indeed but so is society. Example: when I and my 6-year old kid were in an Apple store, he gave his Lego man to some other kid. When it was time to leave, he changed his magnanimous mind and demanded the return of Lego man.

"Son!" I said. "Don't be an Indian giver!" It just rolled off my tongue. And you could have heard a pin drop.

"I mean, I mean, a Benedict Arnold!" I said, trying desperately to self-correct.

Keep in mind that humans have 43 chromosomes. One is a sex chromosome, and we can presume that she didn't get a Y chromosome from her grandfather. Being 1/32nd cherokee would mean that she has less than 1 percent chance of having even one chromosome from her Grandfather's grandfather's father.

Oh, come on, the point is ridiculing Warren; just like old Alinsky said in his rules for Radicals. So, how about some I heard like: Princess Shops-at-Whole-Foods. Or, Dances-with-Dog-Eater. Or, Princess I-Souix-you.

BTW, 'Indian Giver' is not a racial slur because it referred to the pale face who promised some thing to an Indian tribe and then welched on the promise.

I don't care about Warren's claimed ethnic makeup. If everyone in the United States actually had the Cherokee ancestry they claim, there wouldn't have been any full-blooded Cherokees left by the 1960s. What I do care about is using that claim to get ahead of someone else, instead of rising or falling on one's own merits. And that is the essence of affirmative action.

By the way, when we're making fun of someone who's claimed minority status that she doesn't have, is it okay to use old-fashioned racial humor, e.g., calling Warren "pale-faced" and "Princess IsItFall–Yet"? I wouldn't do that. Am I a prissy enforcer of political correctness?